Cruel honesty about my prayer life...

Jan. 19th, 2010
How do people really pray through everything in their life? Not that I’ve never made an effort, but I’ve never figured out a sure-proof system to keep an updated list (most times I don’t even make space in my day to jot one down at all!) I dreadfully regret to admit (even to myself) the amount of time I actually spend in heart-prepared “believing” prayers which stream through the delights of faith…though I plead my love with the jury of His questioning (like Peter, “Do you love me?”) I regret all the missed opportunity to come before the Maker of Heaven and Earth and watch Him do what there is no way I could try a lifetime to accomplish. Oh, but yet I try…I find myself so busy trying that I don’t really enjoy taking the time to seek after what He would do or have me to do. How rarely do I pray specifically, except at crucial times when
*I know I really want to not be in the way of Him getting the glory;
*times when I have been asked by someone and, like Elisha (II Kings right after Elijah dies), am “too ashamed to refuse” and really know I have the time;
*and times when others allow me to join in with them as we take a journey of prayer at a certain time and place?
The truth is, if I feel like I’m doing something (like something will be affected at all if I do), then, I’ll pray. Yet, I do say I believe that prayer does something and I really do with all my heart believe that! So, what is the holdback from doing whatever He says to do in order that I may watch His power stream through my life on a continual basis? If I was, like the woman who in II Kings 4, literally a widow who was about to lose my sons to be the slaves of a creditor, I would do whatever I was told by the man of God. We read that she just tells Elisha her problem – when Elisha says, “What can I do for you?” there is no response – she didn’t know. Elisha then asked her what she had in the house, and she told him that she had nothing except a little oil. Elisha, the man of God, then told her to go to all of her neighbors and ask for their empty jars and made it clear not to ask for only a few! What? She was supposed to do something that made no sense until it was explained that she would then fill them all with oil. She did so, and God did as He had said through Elisha. I’ve always wondered if she lived with “should-haves” the rest of her life? “I should have gone to that neighbor too!” “I should have gotten on the ram’s horn and told the whole city to bring me their jars – then the oil wouldn’t have stopped and the whole nation could have had oil and financial prosperity for our entire lifetime!” Yet, I, when faced with whether I will obey and ask, don’t even go get the jars. I don’t even trust Him, feel I need Him enough, to make me come before Him expectant. Truth is, if it were jars I was told to lay before Him, I would probably jump to my feet faster than I fall to my knees….Because that would be action. Somehow something with me has been lost in translation. The difference is that we would rather do the action than watch God do what only He can! Instead He wants us laying before Him trusting that He is going to answer as He said and waiting for Him to do so – to provide as He promised He would.
Obviously, I guess that’s why I feel that overall (bar those extreme moments braced with His reality) I am living a life overall with only short blasts of that power and no continued airflow. I long for a continuous cycle….and yet I’m unwilling to turn the heater on auto. How? By allowing Him to do in me as He wills without any changing of the temperature when I’m fearful of it costing too much. How to keep a list? I don’t think that’s the question…it’s more that I need to be living in prayer so that there’s no need for a list….the prayers are answered as I pray them – I consider them done unless God recycles those prayers through my life…return air so that I may have breath again to trust Him again. There’s one difference in this illustration….The heat of His presence and constant blowing through our lives never dries out the thin skin of our resolve but only rejuvenates and restores, heals and cleans…prepares somehow for more of His work in and through our lives that we will not have time to watch for we will be so consumed with the passion that He’s already brought to notice what He’s doing through that heat. Without realizing we’ll be consumed and won’t even have tried….we instead just persevered.

I can no longer live without knowing and seeing with my own eyes what He could do dare I ask…and I thought I loved and trusted Him before! ☺ Father God, shake us to the core with the reality that lies before us…and allow us to then do something about it however feeble our response may seem….at least it’s responding – you can work with that.